'We will get to our goal of industry leading growth in fiscal 2017': Infy's Sikka

After pleasantly surprising the markets with better-than-expected results for the third consecutive quarter, Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka is now confident of reclaiming the bellwether tag the company lost to rival TCS a few years agoTV Mahalingam&Anirban Sen | ET Bureau | January 14, 2016, 23:39 IST

Given three quarters of beating the street, is Infosys ready to reclaim the bellwether tag? Is that something that you consider important?

It is. It is. There is a big difference between us considering that tag an aspiration versus us starting to falsely believing in that.

So, others have to say that, like they used to say in the past, that Infosys is the bellwether. However, industry leading growth is what we aspire to and can talk about. I feel comfortable saying that we will get to our goal of industry leading growth in fiscal 2017.

So, what has changed about Infosys in the last nine months?

Steve Jobs said that you can connect the dots looking backward. We can look backwards and connect the dots in any glorified way we want. When I walk around the campus and talk to Infoscions, there is a sense of excitement, energy. It comes from the fact that people get a sense of purpose, energy.

The Zero Distance initiative (which engrains innovation in each of its projects) has had a huge impact on employee morale. 100% of projects that started before November 2015, that are managed by Infosys, have a zero distance plan. When I started Zero Distance in March 2015, in my wildest dreams, I would have not thought that as possible.Then, there is the structured innovation work that we are doing. We are doing a lot of work on automation, artificial intelligence and the big data platform. The big data platform has reached 200 engagements and 30 of those are already deployed in production. The automation platform has 121 engagements. Design thinking has over 150 engagements. These things have started achieving a critical mass now - they are still not at a stage where they have meaningful impact on revenues.

How do you get your large workforce future-ready?

Education is the way to do it. The number of people we have taught Design Thinking is now 70,000. That’s an extraordinary thing. Automation and innovation enabled by education is the way forward.

A few months ago, you tweeted commending Google’s new structure (under alphabet) as “one way large organizations can pace layer their way to achieve agility & scale”. Does that make you think about a new change of structure for Infosys?

You always think about things like that. Ultimately though, we aren’t close to the peak scale or maturity that would make us worry about things like that. What you want is that we have the right size and right agility to deal with the right purpose. This is one example of getting there. I am not saying no to any of that – but we have no plans right now.

It’s been almost 18 months since you took over as CEO…

It feels much longer than that. (Laughs)

How has your relationship with the board matured in this period? How have you evolved in this period?

The board itself has evolved. When I started, Mr (Narayana) Murthy, Mr (KV) Kamath and Kris (Gopalakrishnan) were a part of the board. Now, none of them are there. Carol (M Browner) and Omkar (Goswami) have left. I am very grateful for the board’s unequivocal support.

Would you consider buying Dell’s Perot business, which is up for sale?